Atomic Discipleship, Part 1

A while back, I heard a podcast with the author, James Clear.  Clear is perhaps best known for his seminal book Atomic Habits.  While I had not read his book, I found the conversation intriguing.  The premise, pardon me if I butcher it, is that for many if not all people success in life rarely happens by pure chance and is seldom an overnight change.  Success is often built upon small changes, small habits that accumulate over time and build up to that success.  Profound.  Straightforward.  Practical.

In my mind, I immediately looked at my life and how I have been called to give of myself.  I began by thinking about my habits.  What is it that I am building every day in my life?  What might the culmination of all my small contributions look like down the road? 

Then as my mind began to wander into this territory a bit more.  You see, for most of my life in ministry, I have been ruined.  Early on, someone taught me the genius of Christ-centered, missional discipleship.  You might be thinking that this is nothing new, but I beg to differ.  All too often when we discuss spiritual formation (a word that many use now because ‘disciple’ has been used and overused and rendered practically meaningless by many) almost always we are thinking about systems and processes, pathways and on-ramps, books and studies.  You get the point. And most of the time, we are discussing these things because what we are doing isn’t working, or at least not to the extent that we had hoped it would.  We talk about it as if there is a silver bullet or magic formula that we can use to start developing faithful disciples of Jesus who are committed fully to his way of life and his purposes.  But the fruit we see is the result of the means we use and the habits we build.

What if we were so clear about discipleship…what could happen? Growth is what happens when we are intentional. If we are clear about who we are becoming, and the small habits that we are committed to, over time it will have huge results.  If we attend to the small simple things intentionally, we will see an enormous result.

That is the premise. Profound. Straightforward. Practical.

So, to talk about atomic discipleship, we have to begin with the end in mind.  If we are becoming disciples and making disciples…What are disciples?  What is a disciple?

To hit the mark, we must set the mark.

In modern history, discipleship has most often been associated with church membership.  I have had the opportunity to work with other congregational leaders over the past few years on this. I ask a team of people and say, “What is a disciple?” I will get a different answer although expressing the same idea.  It’s foggy though. It’s blurry. And we need that to be crystal clear.  

This matters a great deal because in our church the missional mandate for us, our reason for existence, is to make new disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, and if we don’t know exactly what we are talking about as a congregation we won’t be very good at doing it.

So, we must set the mark.

The good news is that we don’t have to set the mark on our own.  We are following Jesus, we are HIS disciples. It’s profound. Straightforward. Practical. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus says if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. (That sounds like 3 or 4 volumes of work in itself!)

A disciple, a follower, must deny themselves, take up their cross…

Jesus makes it clear that to follow him there isn’t a “Me-first” style to it.  Deny yourself.  It makes us think about one of the biggest challenges in the world we live in and the way that we have been socialized.  It runs counter to that.  Here in the United States, much of our economy is consumer-driven; therefore, we are inundated with ads.  Each ad, in some form, reminds us that the world revolves around us and our wants, desires, and conveniences. That isn’t Jesus’ offer.

Even still, if we are making disciples, and we tell everyone to deny your self, take up your cross, and follow.  That still might be a little confusing, blurry, and challenging.  

What we are hearing in this challenge from Jesus is that you cannot have it your way.  It’s about Jesus’ way. Taking up your cross is often about the cost of not living life on our terms but on Jesus’ terms.  This statement is simply about Lordship, headship, about submitting to Jesus before we follow him.

Jesus is our influencer. He is our guide.  He is our mentor. He is our teacher.

For the first time in a long time, our family ate food from Burger King.  My daughter told me that when she went through the drive-thru, they told her, “You Rule!” It’s their slogan for their customers.  It used to be that they were the King of the Burger, but now that mantle is passed to the consumer.  You can really have your burger, your way.  You are the King.  You rule! 

Jesus isn’t the King of Burgers, but I suppose you could make the argument that he would since he is the King of Kings—and all the universes.  However, that seems like a waste of good brain energy.

Does he truly rule?  Do we allow him to exercise dominion and influence over our lives as our King?  Are we truly loyal subjects? Faithful disciples?

Are we committed to following Jesus even when his actions and our feelings and desires don't match up? Are we committed to doing what he leads us to do before we might ever really know what that is?

That is part of setting the mark for discipleship.  It’s not exactly “do what you can when you can,” although that is how we do it.  Sometimes it calls us to give up so that we can gain more in our lives.

Where do we start though?  I facilitated a workshop with our staff, we spent some time wrestling with what it means to be a disciple.  And we wanted to use language that transcends age and life stage…at least from say a third grader on up.

And this is how we begin to shape our staff-led ministries.  For us, it is the mark that we are working toward.

We say that a disciple of Jesus hears his word, follows his example, and trains others in his mission. Does this cover everything, pretty much, at a 30k foot level, but at least we have a direction…a mark.

 Our goal is that each of us—those people who call themselves disciples of Jesus—would adopt this as your mark too.  This should be the direction that you will intentionally direct your life so that each of us would be connected with God like Jesus, so that we would live a life of faithful love and grace and righteousness as Jesus did, and so that we will help others learn this life and go live it.

So now when you think about our missional mandate as followers of Jesus, remember we exist to make new disciples (people who hear his word, follow his example, and train others for his mission; or whatever your definition/mark is) of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

We must dig a bit to get to a more atomic level, and when we do our mission becomes a little clearer.  We are able to see more clearly about our own lives.  

The first part of atomic discipleship is that we must make sure that we see clearly. 

And this sets us up for the next steps in our life of discipleship on an atomic level.